The Metallic Muse (10 page)

“The robot flashes the music on a screen, and the student knows just what he’s playing because each measure lights up as he gets to it and disappears after he plays it. If he bothers to watch the screen, he knows. If he doesn’t watch it, it doesn’t make any difference. The robot won’t let him make a mistake. I saw a robot demonstrated with young children who were frightened to death of it. It ignored their crying and went right ahead making them Play.”

“That sounds bad,” I said. “I’d think all kids would hate being taught that way.”

“Actually, the robot doesn’t teach anything. All it does is use the student like an instrument. The robot’s student can’t play without the robot any more than a violin can play by itself. A man in New York did a research project. He started one group of students with a violin teacher and another group with a robot. At the end of two years the teacher’s students were coming along nicely, and the robot’s students couldn’t play a thing. Except with the robot, of course. They could play anything with the robot.”

“What if we were to do a research project like that in Waterville?”

The professor shook his head. “There isn’t time. If I gave lessons for nothing I could get my students back, or, get some new students, but it would take too long to prove anything.”

“Is there any chance that the robot might be harmful?” ,

“Unless it’s used by an expert, it might be, and Beyers hasn’t got an expert. Muscles have to be strengthened gradually. It certainly isn’t good to force a young person’s fingers to play difficult music before they’re ready for it. There was a composer named Schumann. Nineteenth century. You probably haven’t heard of him. He was a pianist, and he built a gadget to exercise a finger he thought was weak. It ruined his career as a performer.”

“Was he an important composer?” I asked.

“He was fairly important.”

Suddenly I was feeling much better. “Now that’s something I can use. It makes good material for an editorial. ‘Is the Robot Harming Our Children?’ That’ll make people sit up and take notice.”

He shook his head sadly. “People never stay sitting up very long. Too uncomfortable. No, Johnnie. You’d need a lot of research data and a lot of time.”

I got up and paced the floor again. Hilda came in and cleared away the coffee things, and then she came back to the doorway and stood there wringing her hands.

“What do you expect me to do?” I demanded finally. “Just stand around and watch while Beyers wrecks everything you’ve accomplished in Waterville?”

“Just be patient,” he said. “A machine cannot replace the artist. Remember that. And a teacher—a good teacher—is an artist.”

“How did Beyers ever happen to buy that robot in the first place?”

The professor smiled sadly. “You know what he thinks of his daughter. She’s the smartest kid in town. She writes stories and poems, and she’s won first prize in the last two contests you sponsored. She dances as though gravity doesn’t exist. She acts in plays. He figures she ought to be a whiz at music, too, and he sends her to me for violin lessons. I send her home again. She’s a lovely girl, and she’s bright and talented, but she’s also tone-deaf.

“Beyers thinks I insulted him. I explain that a girl who can’t hear the difference between one note and another is wasting time and money if she takes music lessons, and he says her being tone-deaf has nothing to do with it, and anyway she isn’t, and he’ll show me I’m wrong if it’s the last thing he ever does. So he orders the robot to give Sharon violin lessons, and while he’s at it he gives free lessons to everyone and tries to take all of my students.”

“Beyers would naturally hate anyone who suggested that Sharon wasn’t perfect in every respect,” I agreed. “But why didn’t you just go ahead and give her the lessons? It’d be his money that’d be wasted.”

“I try to be an honest man, Johnnie. There are lots of things the girl can do well. It wouldn’t be healthy for her to try something she’s physically incapable of doing.” “Well, I’m glad you’re so sure things will work out all right. I wish I could be as confident. Even so I’d like to help them along a little—speed them up.”

He looked thoughtful. “There’s only one way, I think, to speed them up. The robot would have to give me a violin lesson, and Beyers would never let me near the thing.”

“Just what did you have in mind?” I asked him.

He shook his head without answering.

“If all you want is a lesson, I can arrange that easily. Beyers will have to give it to you. He’s been advertising free lessons for anyone.”

“He wouldn’t accept me.”

“If he doesn’t, he’s guilty of fraudulent advertising. Here, let me call him.”

I went over to the visiphone and cut off the visual transmitter. Then I put through the call and got Beyers.

“I suppose you’re having trouble reading that ad,” he said, laughing. “I should have had it typed.”

“No trouble,” I said. “I just wanted to make an appointment with that robot of yours. I have a new student for it.”

“Hey—that’s great!” he said. He’d been trying to interest me in the robot—he thought I hadn’t given it the publicity it deserved. “Send him over—there’s time open right now.”

“I’ll bring him myself,” I said. I cut the connection and told the professor, “Let’s go!”

He picked up his violin. I was feeling nervous before we got outside the door, and it didn’t help any when the professor had to stop eleven times before we reached the street to show me his pet flowers.

We panted our way up the stairway to the Beyers School of Music, and at the top we entered a small, comfortably furnished waiting room. On the wall was a large color photo of Sharon Beyers, looking lovely and doll-like-in her dancing costume. On the opposite wall was a charcoal drawing of Sharon, beautifully done by one of the professor’s young summer artists. On the other walls were smaller photos of Sharon. If Beyers ever had a picture, made of his teen-aged son, Wilbur, I never saw it. He probably kept it in the stock room.

I walked over and touched a button. A moment later footsteps came banging up the stairway and Wilbur burst into the room. If life were a five-card game, Wilbur would be the unfortunate type who had to get along with three. He wasn’t quite ugly enough to be repulsive, and he wasn’t quite intelligent enough to appear normal. He grinned at me, and then he saw the professor and froze.

“What’s he doing here?” he yelped.

“I’ve come to take a lesson,” the professor said peacefully. “Mr. Cranton made an appointment for me.”

There’s nothing wrong with Wilbur’s instincts. He was instantly, belligerently suspicious; but it took him a while to think of the next question, and when it came it wasn’t especially brilliant. “What’s the big idea?”

“The idea,” I said, “is that the professor is here to take a lesson.”

“He ain’t no student!”

“One is never too old to learn,” the professor said cheerfully. “Don’t they teach you that in school? No? Such a shame. You’ll be as old as I am, some day, and you should remember that. When a man stops learning he’s already dead. So is a robot, when it stops learning.” “I won’t give you a lesson.”

“Not you,” the professor said. “The robot. The robot gives me the lesson.”

Wilbur glared at him, groping deeply for words and not finding them. “I better get Pa,” he said finally.

His footsteps went slamming back down the stairway. He slammed back up a moment later and waited at the top. Sam Beyers came up the stairway slowly. He was a slight, quiet-looking man with graying hair and a carefully trimmed mustache. He had a pleasant-looking face and usually he wore a friendly smile; but he wasn’t smiling, and there was nothing pleasant in the glance he threw at the professor.

He turned on me. “What’s Perkins doing here?”

“You told me to bring him over for a lesson. I brought him, and let’s have the lesson.”

“He can give himself lessons. Out of here, both of you.”

He fully intended to eject us bodily if we wouldn’t leave, or at least to make a good try at it. His face was white, with a dull, red touch of anger in his cheeks. His hands were trembling. I felt sorry for him, and I wondered if those who love too much invariably end by hating too much.

I turned to the professor. “If he wants to violate the law, that’s his business. Let’s look up Tom Silvers and have him draw up a couple of affidavits for the District Attorney.”

Beyers squared his shoulders and said icily, “I’ll run this business any way I want to run it.”

“No, you won’t,” I told him. “For three weeks you’ve been advertising free lessons for anyone. If you refuse to give the professor a lesson, that makes it fraudulent advertising. Check that with your own attorney.”

He was slowly regaining control of himself. The red was gone from his cheeks, but the pasty-white color that remained was no improvement. He sat down heavily and glared at the professor. “What are you after?”

“Music lessons,” the professor said.

“If he thinks the robot is a good thing, maybe he’ll retire,” I said. “Then you’d get all of his students.”

“I’ll get all of his students anyway,” Beyers said.

“No you won’t,” I said. “You’ll lose what you have when people start wondering why you refused to give him a lesson.”

Beyers’s color was almost back to normal. He studied the professor slyly and said, half to himself, “You know—that really might not be a bad idea. If the robot can give Perkins lessons, people will know it can give anyone lessons.” He jerked erect. “Give him a lesson, Wilbur. I want to watch this myself.”

Wilbur led the way into the next room, the sanctuary of the robot, and the rest of us trailed along. The professor got out his violin and approached his rival calmly. The robot stood in the center of the room, an impressive edifice of glistening metal and plastic. The multitude of metallic, tentacles hung limply at its sides. On its back was a large control panel; on its front was a darkened screen and a row of inset signal lights.

I glanced sideways at Beyers. He’d lost interest in the proceedings already—he’d seated himself in the corner and was staring across the room at a full-length photo of Sharon. I thought to myself, in a few more years that girl will be a beauty, and woe to any young man who tries to court her!

Wilbur bustled about nervously, measuring the professor and fussing with the dials on the back of the robot. He adjusted the screen to the professor’s eye level and moved him forward until his shoes slipped into recesses in a protrusion of the robot’s base. Then he ducked behind the robot.

“Beginner?” he giggled.

“Anything you like,” the professor said.

“We’ll call you advanced,” Wilbur announced. He threw a switch, and the robot hummed quietly. The word TUNE flashed onto the screen.

The professor scornfully plucked his strings, one at a time, and a green light flashed as each tone sounded. Wilbur stood staring at the robot.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “Most of the kids take ten minutes to get green on that!”

“I believe you,” the professor told him.

Music flashed on the screen, but he made no motion to raise his violin to playing position. The tentacles suddenly encircled him. As I watched in amazement, the robot gently positioned the violin for him, eased his elbows to the proper angle and raised his bow. The violin tone filled the room, a brittle, mechanical tone. I knew it was not the professor playing.

He called out above the music, “I am completely relaxed. I do nothing at all, and still the robot makes me play. You see, Johnnie?”

“Incredible!” I breathed.

Sam Beyers chuckled quietly.

“Now I play myself,” the professor said. Instantly the tone was warm and expressive. “Now the robot relaxes. But supposing I try to make a mistake. There, you see? No mistake. And this fortissimo passage—supposing I try to play pianissimo. And I can’t—you see? If I relax, the robot puts the necessary pressure on the bow.”

“Incredible,” I said again.

The music flowed on to the end of the exercise. Sometimes it was the professor I heard, sometimes the robot, and the professor kept up a running comment on what was happening. Then the tentacles dropped away, the screen went blank, and the word TUNE appeared. The professor stepped back.

Wilbur Beyers giggled proudly. Sam Beyers walked over and started to place his hand on the professor’s shoulder. Then he changed his mind. His smile appeared to be normal, but there was a vindictive gleam in his eyes.

“Are you willing to admit that my robot can teach you a few things?” he asked.

“But certainly! It’s already given me an idea or two. I’m not satisfied with the response, though. Would you mind if I change strings?”

“Of course not. Go right ahead.”

As the professor took new strings from his violin case, voices drifted in from the waiting room. Mrs. Karl Anderson stuck her blonde head through the door. “Is it time for Carol’s lesson? Oh!” She stared at the professor.

“Bring Carol in, Mrs. Anderson,” the professor said. She has her lesson as soon as I finish mine.” He turned to Wilbur. “Right?”

“Right,” Wilbur giggled. He winked at Carol, and that young lady blushed and scurried over to seat herself very primly beside her mother.

“It won’t take much longer,” the professor said. “I’ll try maybe one more exercise. Does it have something difficult?”

“Sure,” Wilbur said. “I’ll give you something good and hard. It’s pretty good stuff. I was playing it myself yesterday.”

The professor moved back to the robot, took his position, and plucked his strings. The green lights flashed and the music appeared.

“Ah!” the professor said. “Paganini. So you play Paganini, Wilbur. That’s wonderful!”

“Never had a lesson in my life, except from the robot.”

“You don’t say!”

“Sharon plays Paganini, too,” Beyers blurted.

The professor smiled but said nothing—the tentacles, were already embracing him. I leaned forward, waiting to see which would do the playing—the professor or the robot.

It was neither. After the first few notes even Sam Beyers realized that something was wrong. He bounded to his feet and raced across the room. The sounds limped on, distorted beyond any resemblance to music. Red lights crackled on and off. The robot’s faint hum became louder. Wilbur buried his face in the control panel, mouth agape.